Recently, global environmental contamination has become a serious issue, and thus, use of clean energy is becoming more and more important. Particularly, air pollution in major cities has become severe, and vehicle exhaust gas is one of main causes of the air pollution.
A green vehicle has been developed and operated in order to reduce such exhaust gas and to improve fuel efficiency.
The green vehicle is a future car that discharges little or no exhaust gas. The green vehicle includes a pure electric vehicle driven using power of an electric motor, a hybrid vehicle driven using combined power from a motor and an engine, or a fuel cell vehicle driven via power from an electric motor operated by electricity generated within a fuel cell.
A high-voltage battery as an electric power source for driving a motor, a converter, etc. is mounted in such a green vehicle.
The green vehicle monitors the voltage, current, temperature, etc. of the battery to estimate a temperature of the battery and a degree of degradation of the battery including a state of charge (SOC) of the battery. Accordingly, it is important to manage the battery state so as to maintain a predetermined level or higher.
One of the reasons for managing the battery state as described above is to monitor the SOC of the battery in real time to inform a driver of a distance to empty (DTE) corresponding to remaining capacity of the battery during driving.
In internal combustion engine vehicles, the driver is informed of the DTE estimated from the current fuel state. Similarly, in green vehicles, a remaining DTE corresponding to a remaining capacity of the battery is estimated from a current remaining capacity of the battery. This DTE may then be displayed on an instrument cluster or the like.
The conventional method for calculating the DTE calculates based on information regarding a traffic situation, a road slope, and an average vehicle speed. But in the prior art, when an event such as route correction, route deviation, addition of a stopover, change of destination, route cancellation, etc., occurs in designated route driving information, a changed DTE may not be provided to the driver.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the disclosure and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.